Reading The Real House of Hades
by nicodiangeloforever
Summary: A book falls on Nico's head, and then a note gets stuck to his face. It's a book called "The House of Hades", and it has Annabeth and Percy on the cover... So, naturally, they start to read it. I swear to god that this is the real book.


**I hope you all enjoy this! I guarantee that this is the real thing. :)  
**

All the demigods were at Camp Half-Blood, celebrating the crew of the _Argo II _'s return.

Suddenly, a book fell on Nico's head. "Ow, who threw that?!" He cried out angrily.

"It wasn't me." Connor said. "And it wasn't Travis, either."

Nico groaned as he got up off the ground. Suddenly, his eyes lit up as he glanced at the title of the book. It was called _'The House of Hades'_!

Annabeth came over beside Nico, and Percy followed her. "What is it?" She asked.

"L-look at the t-title and the picture!" Nico told her, voice shaking.

"Whoa!" Annabeth made a surprised sort of yelp.

Hazel ran over, with Frank at her heels. "Are you okay, Nico? Someone said you got hit by a book falling out of the-" She gasped. "Oh Gods."

Frank peered over her shoulder at the book she was staring at. "What?!" He asked. It wasn't every day that you saw a book with some of your best friends on the cover of it.

Then a note appeared, stuck to Nico's face with tape. "Seriously?" He complained.

Annabeth read out the note to everyone. "Dear demigods, it is I, the most awesomest sun god, Apollo! So, anyway, I thought you guys could read out your adventures to everyone! Peace out, godlings! Wishing you a life with many haikus, sincerely, Apollo."

"That definitely sounds like Apollo." Leo spoke up from where he had been standing, silently. Something had been up with him since he had disappeared for a while.

"Well, who wants to read the book first?" Percy asked, after they had gathered all the demigods at Camp Half-Blood together.

"Is it alright if I read?" Hazel asked.

"Of course!" Percy smiled.

**HAZEL I  
**

"Oh! It starts in my point of view!" Hazel laughed.

**DURING THE THIRD ATTACK, Hazel almost ate a boulder. **

"What do they taste like?" Leo wondered out loud.

**She was peering into the fog, wondering how it could be so difficult to fly across one stupid mountain range, when the ship's alarm bells sounded. **  
**"Hard to port!" Nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship. **

Nico looked slightly nervous, knowing that his secret might be revealed.  
**Back at the helm, Leo yanked the wheel. The ****_Argo II_**** veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives. **  
**Hazel made the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark, spherical shape hurtled toward her. She thought: Why is the moon coming at us? Then she yelped and hit the deck. The huge rock passed so close overhead, it blew her hair out of her face. **

Frank looked a little worried. _So this is what happened when he was asleep? His girlfriend almost dying? But then again, that happened all the time_, he thought.  
**_CRACK!_**  
**The foremast collapsed-sail, spars, and Nico all crashing to the deck. The boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbled off into the fog like it had important business elsewhere. **  
**"Nico!" Hazel scrambled over to him as Leo brought the ship level. **  
**"I'm fine," Nico muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs. **

"You had splinters all over yourself. You weren't exactly all fine..." Hazel said to Nico.

"Uh, sorry?" Nico tried.

"It's okay." Hazel smiled.  
**She helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow. Hazel peeked over more carefully this time. The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below them: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit was a mountain god-one of the ****_numina montanum_****, Jason had called them. Or ****_ourae_****, in Greek. Whatever you called them, they were nasty. **

"Very nasty." Leo said, reminded of the annoying things.  
**Like the others they had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt. He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular, with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair, and a wild look in his eyes, like a crazy hermit.**

"Scary..." Connor and Travis whispered with big eyes, pretending to be terrified.

Everyone just rolled their eyes or laughed at their silly antics.

**He bellowed something Hazel didn't understand, but it obviously wasn't welcoming. With his bare hands, he pried another chunk of rock from his mountain and began shaping it into a ball. **  
**The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again, other ****_numina_**** answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys. **  
**"Stupid rock gods!" Leo yelled from the helm. "That's the ****_third_**** time I've had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?" **  
**Nico frowned. "Masts ****_are_**** from trees." **

Everyone burst out laughing. Nico looked annoyed.  
**"That's not the point!" Leo snatched up one of his controls, a jury-rigged Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. A Celestial bronze cannon rose. Hazel just had time to cover he ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and spun away into the fog. **

"COOL!" The Stolls yelled together.

Leo had a smug look on his face.  
**A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roar of mountain gods. **  
**"Ha!" Leo yelled. **  
**Unfortunately, Hazel guessed, judging from their last two encounters, Leo's newest weapon had only annoyed the ****_numina_****. **  
**Another boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side. **  
**Nico yelled, "Get us out of here!" **

"Wimp." Clarisse said.

Immediately skeleton warriors were chasing her, and Chris Rodriguez ran to help her.  
**Leo muttered some unflattering comments about ****_numina_****, but he turned the wheel. The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. The ****_Argo II_**** picked up speed, retreating northwest, as they'd been doing for the past two days. **  
**Hazel didn't relax until they were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside-rolling green hills and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. Hazel could almost imagine she was sailing home to Camp Jupiter. **  
**The thought weighed on her chest. Camp Jupiter had only been her home for nine months, since Nico had brought her back from the Underworld. But she missed it more than her birthplace of New Orleans, and ****_definitely_**** more than Alaska, where she'd died back in 1942. **

A few demigods new to Camp Half-Blood gasped or looked very surprised.  
**She missed her bunk in the Fifth Cohort barracks. She missed dinners in the mess hall, with wind spirits whisking platters through the air and legionnaires joking about the war games. She wanted to wander the streets of New Rome, holding hands with Frank Zhang. She wanted to experience just being a regular girl for once, with an actual sweet, caring boyfriend. **

"Awwww!" A bunch of Aphrodite girls cooed.  
**Most of all, she wanted to feel safe. She was tired of being scared and worried all the time. **  
**She stood on the quarterdeck as Nico picked mast splinters out of his arms and Leo punched buttons on the ship's console. **  
**"Well, ****_that_**** was sucktastic," Leo said. "Should I wake the others?" **

"Sucktastic is the awesomest word ever!" Leo said.

A few other demigods agreed with him.  
**Hazel was tempted to say yes, but the other crewmembers had taken the night shift and had earned their rest. They were exhausted from defending the ship. Every few hours, it seemed, some Roman monster had decided the ****_Argo II_**** looked like a tasty treat. **  
**A few weeks ago, Hazel wouldn't have believed that anyone could sleep through a ****_numina_**** attack, but now she imagined her friends were still snoring away belowdecks. Whenever ****_she_**** got a chance to crash, she slept like a coma patient. **  
**"They need rest," she said. "We'll have to figure out another way on our own." **  
**"Huh." Leo scowled at his monitor. In his tattered work shirt and grease-splattered jeans, he looked like he'd just lost a wrestling match with a locomotive. **

A bunch of people laughed, imagining Leo wrestling with a locomotive.  
**Ever since their friends Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus, Leo had been working almost nonstop. He'd been acting angrier and even more driven than usual. **  
**Hazel worried about him. **

Frank glared at Leo for a second, then remembered that the crazy Hephaestus kid was in love with someone else other than Hazel. Or at least that's what he was told...

**But part of her was relieved by the change. Whenever Leo smiled and joked, he looked ****_too_**** much like Sammy, is great-grandfather...Hazel's first boyfriend back in 1942. **  
**Ugh, why did her life have to be so complicated?**

"Your life isn't as bad as mine." Percy muttered.  
**"Another way," Leo muttered. "Do you see one?" **  
**On his monitor glowed a map of Italy. The Apennine Mountains ran down the middle of the boot-shaped country. A green dot for the ****_Argo II_**** blinked on the western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. Their path should have been simple. They needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find an old temple called the House of Hades (or Pluto, as the Romans called him; or as Hazel liked to think of him: the World's Worst Absent Father). **

Some people laughed, but Nico and Hazel looked at each other sadly; They didn't exactly have the best dad in world.  
**To reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east-over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn't worked out that way.**

"Of course not." Thalia said.

"Why do our lives have to be so difficult?!" Jason grumbled to no one in particular.

"Because we're 'special'." Thalia answered.

"Very 'special'." Leo laughed.

** Each time they tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked. **  
**For the past two days they'd skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no luck. The ****_numina montanum_**** were sons of Gaea, Hazel's least favorite goddess. That made them ****_very_**** determined enemies. The ****_Argo II_**** couldn't fly high enough to avoid their attacks; and even with all its defenses, the ship couldn't make it across the range without being smashed to pieces. **  
**"It's our fault," Hazel said. "Nico and mine." The ****_numina_**** can sense us." **  
**She glanced at her half brother. Since they'd rescued him from the giants, he'd started to regain his strength, but he was still painfully thin. His black shirt and jeans hung off his skeletal frame. Long, dark hair framed his sunken eyes. His olive complexion had turned a sickly greenish-white, like the color of tree sap. **  
**In human years, he was barely fourteen, just a year older than Hazel; but that didn't tell the whole story. Like Hazel, Nico di Angelo was a demigod from another era. He radiated a kind of ****_old_**** energy-a melancholy that came from knowing he didn't belong in the modern world. **  
**Hazel hadn't known him very long, but she understood, even shared his sadness. The children of Hades (Pluto-whichever) rarely had happy lives. And judging from what Nico had told her the night before, their biggest challenge was yet to come when they reached the House of Hades- a challenge he'd implored her to keep secret from the others. **

"You have a lot of secrets you haven't told us, don't you?" Frank said to Nico.

Nico looked a bit panicked for a moment. "Please continue..." He said to Hazel quickly.  
**Nico gripped the hilt of his Stygian iron sword. "Earth spirits don't like children of the Underworld. That's true. We get under their skin-****_literally_****. But I think the ****_numina_**** could sense this ship anyway. We're carrying the Athena Parthenos. That thing is like a magical beacon." **  
**Hazel shivered, thinking of the massive statue that took up mosty of the hold. They'd sacrificed so much, saving it from the cavern under Rome; but they had no idea what to do with it. So far the only thing it seemed to be good for was alerting more monsters to their presence. **  
**Leo traced his finger down the map of Italy. "So crossing the mountains is out. Thing is, they go a long way in either direction." **  
**"We could go by sea," Hazel suggested. "Sail around the southern tip of Italy." **  
**"That's a long way," Nico said. "Plus, we don't have..." **  
**His voice cracked. "You know...our sea expert, Percy." **  
**The name hung in the air like an impending storm. **

"How does a name hang in the air?" Percy asked.

Annabeth looked like she was about to give him a big long explanation, so Hazel quickly continued reading.  
**Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon...probably the demigod Hazel admired the most. He'd saved her life so many times on their quest to Alaska; but when he had needed Hazel's help in Rome, she'd failed him. She'd watched, powerless, as he and Annabeth had plunged into that pit... **  
**Hazel took a deep breath. Percy and Annabeth were still alive. She knew that in her heart. She could ****_still_**** help them if she could get to the House of Hades, if she could survive the challenge Nico had warned her about... **

"What challenge?" Annabeth asked, clearly wanting to know.

Nico and Hazel decided not to say anything. Annabeth looked annoyed.  
**"What about continuing north?" she asked. "There ****_has_**** to be a break in the mountains, or something." **  
**Leo fiddled with the bronze Archimedes sphere that he'd installed on the console-his newest and most dangerous toy. Every time Hazel looked at the thing, her mouth went dry. She worried that Leo would turn the wrong combinationon the sphere and accidentally eject them all from the deck, or blow up the ship, or turn the ****_Argo II_**** into a giant toaster. **

"You don't trust me?!" Leo asked.

"Of course I do!" Hazel replied. She didn't want to make Leo sad.  
**Fortunately, they got lucky. The sphere grew a camera lens and projected a 3D image of the Apennine Mountains above the console. **  
**"I dunno." Leo examined the holograph. "I don't see any good passes to the north. But I like the idea better than backtracking south. I'm done with Rome." **  
**No one argued with that. Rome had not been a good experience. **  
**"Whatever we so," Nico said, "we have to hurry. Every day that Annabeth and Percy are in Tartarus..." **

"Oh, right. We're still in Tartarus, of course." Percy said glumly, putting his arm around Annabeth's shoulder.  
**He didn't need to finish. They had to hope Percy and Annabeth could survive long enough to find the Tartarus side of the Doors of Death. Then, assuming the ****_Argo II_**** could reach the House of Hades, they ****_might_**** be able to open the doors on the mortal side, save their friends, and seal the entrance, stopping Gaea's forces from being reincarnated in the mortal world, over and over. **  
**Yes...nothing could go wrong with ****_that_**** plan. **

"Actually, a lot of things could." Annabeth said logically.  
**Nico scowled at the Italian countryside below them. "Maybe we ****_should_**** wake the others. The decision affects us all." **  
**"No," Hazel said. "We can find a solution." **  
**She wasn't sure why she felt strongly about it, but since leaving Rome, the crew had started to lose its cohesion. They'd been learning to work as a team. Then ****_bam_****...their two most important members fell into Tartarus. Percy had been their backbone. He'd given them confidence as they sailed across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. As for Annabeth-she'd been the de facto leader of the quest. She'd recovered the Athena Parthenos single-handedly. She was the smartest of the seven, the one with the answers. **

"Thank you for your appreciation." Percy said.  
**If Hazel woke up the rest of the crew every time they had a problem, they'd just start arguing again, feeling more and more hopeless. **  
**She had to make Percy and Annabeth proud of her. She had to take the initiative. She couldn't believe her only role in this quest would be what Nico had warned her of-removing the obstacle waiting for them in the House of Hades. She pushed the thought aside. **  
**"We need some creative thinking," she said. "Another way to cross those mountains, or a way to hide ourselves from the ****_numina._****" **  
**Nico sighed. "If I was on my own, I could shadow-travel. But that won't work for an entire ship. And honestly, I'm not sure I have the strength to even transport ****_myself_**** anymore." **  
**"I could maybe rig some kind of camouflage," Leo said, "like a smoke screen to hide us in the clouds." He didn't sound very enthusiastic. **

"Well, duh. I wasn't exactly able to do that." Leo said.  
**Hazel stared down at the rolling farmland, thinking about what lay beneath it-the realm of her father, lord of the Underworld. She'd only met Pluto once, and she hadn't realized who he was. She certainly had never expected help from him-not when she was alive the first time, not during her time as a spirit in the Underworld, not since Nico had brought her back to the world of the living. **  
**Her dad's servant Thanatos, god of death, had suggested that Pluto might be doing Hazel a favor by ignoring her. After all, she wasn't supposed to be alive. If Pluto took notice of her, he might have to return her to the land of the dead. **  
**Which meant calling on Pluto would be a very bad idea. **

Frank looked a bit worried for Hazel.

"It's okay now." Hazel whispered to him.  
**And yet... **  
**_Please, Dad,_**** she found herself praying. ****_I_**** have ****_to find a way to your temple in Greece-the House of Hades. If you're down there, show me what to do._**  
**At the edge of the horizon, a flicker of movement caught her eye-something small and beige racing across the fields at incredible speed, leaving a vapor trail like a plane's. **

"Huh?" A few demigods said, confused.  
**Hazel couldn't believe it. She didn't dare hope, but it ****_had_**** to be..."Arion." **  
**"What?" Nico asked. **  
**Leo let out a happy whoop as the dust cloud got closer. **  
**"It's her horse, man! You missed that whole part. We haven't seen him since Kansas!" **

The people who had been confused now understood, and some said "Oh."  
**Hazel laughed-the first time she'd laughed in days. It felt so good to see her old friend. **  
**About a mile to the north, the small beige dot circled a hill and stopped at the summit. He was difficult to make out, but when the horse reared and whinnied, the sound carried all the way to the ****_Argo II_****. Hazel had no doubt-it was Arion. **  
**"We have to meet him," she said. "He's here to help." **  
**"Yeah, okay." Leo scratched his head. "But, uh, we talked about not landing the ship on the ground anymore, remember? You know, with Gaea wanting to destroy us, and all."**

"Wouldn't want to get destroyed." Travis said.  
**"Just get me close, and I'll use the rope ladder." Hazel's heart was pounding. "I think Arion wants to tell me something." **

"That's the end of this chapter." Hazel said. "Who wants to read next?"

"I will." Frank said, and Hazel handed him the book.

**Well, everyone's probably already read this chapter because it's a sneak peek, but I will put the next chapters in soon.  
**


End file.
